A cyber security firm recently taken a dig on the amount of information various apps gather legally about their users. We all know that none of our data online on any forum is safe. Many apps come in the limelight and face lawsuits for invasively collecting users’ data, but did you ever think about the legal ways these apps use to track you? And this is not the regular tracking with website cookies. This is quite elaborate!

What are the top 5 companies?

Currently the top 5 leading companies that know the most about you based on app data are Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, Grindr and Uber. Unsurprisingly Facebook tops the list of all offenders with a good 70.59% of data that it collects from its users.

2^nd inline is Facebook’s stablemate, Instagram, which collects 58.82% of users’ data. It will be foolish to think that these apps require so much of our data to give us a more personalized experience! Of course, they use it for different purposes that serve their own benefits too.

Tinder and Grindr come next in the 3^rd and 4^th slots with 55.88 and 52.94% of users’ data that they collect respectively.

Finally Uber comes in the 5^th slot, with around 53% of users’ data that they collect.

What were the categories under which these ranks were based on?

Initially the infographics were created with 48 apps, including online stories, social media platforms and video streaming services, and divided the questions they ask from their users into 32 categories.

For the top 5 companies excluding 5 categories the rest were relevant. These categories were all about personal info like, email, name, age, gender sexual orientation, marital status, race, religious belief, live location, home address, employment status, job title, pet/animal ownership, mobile number, landline number, type of phone/device, hobbies, interests, height, weight, next of kin, current employers, past employers, bank account details, social profile friends, social profile hobbies and social profile interests.